Iran’s ominous alliance with Russia

While the American mainstream media are busy conducting their nightly proctologic examination of the Trump administration’s supposed blunders, a new balance of power is taking shape in the Middle East. The press seems intent on ignoring this momentous development, perhaps because bringing it front and center would expose the Obama administration’s Iran deal as one of the worst fiascos in American diplomatic history.

I refer to the powerful, durable and growing alliance between Russia and Iran, which, if it continues, has ominous consequences for the United States and its ally Israel.

For well over a year, the Russians have been bombing the insurgents fighting the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad. Russia is not just bombing ISIS, as Vladimir Putin has sometimes claimed, but all of the militias that threaten the Iranian-backed Assad regime. That includes those militias that we have armed and trained as a sane, non-Islamist alternative to the regime.

Russia has its own reasons for supporting Assad, however; by coordinating its air operations with the Syrians and their Iranian backers, Russia is cementing its relationship with the radical, anti-American and antiIsraeli mullahs in Iran.

This isn’t the type of regional alliance America can ignore. Rather, it has the potential to escalate conflict in an already volatile region.

Iran, the world’s top terror sponsor, wants to grow more powerful. And in a match made in heaven — or the other place — Russia provides the key.

Thanks to the Obama administration, Iran is becoming the recipient of more than $100 billion in freed-up assets. Meantime, to expand its hegemonic role and to counter both Turkish and American influence, Iran is looking to modernize its military and that of its clients, which include the Syrian regime.

Russia is looking to sell more of its advanced weapons systems, strengthen its relationship with the potentially lucrative market of Iran — and capitalize on the Syrian conflict to give its troops combat experience.

It is estimated that Russia has rotated some 10,000 troops in and out of the Syrian conflict, thereby providing a live-ammunition training camp for its troops, securing its relations with Iran and developing a new market for its weapons systems.

This is a marriage that President Barack Obama consummated, the first offspring of which will be enhanced Russian weapons in the hands of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthi militia in Yemen.

When pitching its deal, the Obama administration insisted that nothing was as important as delaying Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.

There is strong disagreement as to whether that was accomplished by the agreement. Yet one thing is irrefutable: The Obama administration’s lifting of sanctions and the freeing of sequestered Iranian assets fortified Iran’s conventional-weapons terror threat, both through traditional channels and terrorist militias.

In sum: The Obama administration’s removal of sanctions, coupled with Russian combat support and hardware flowing into Iran, imperils the entire region.

Obama’s legacy is not a non-nuclear Iran, but an economically rejuvenated Iran that has the resources and sponsors to wreak chaos and destruction in the region as it embarks on fulfilling its dream of a Shiite crescent from Iran to the Mediterranean Sea.

Yet because of their dangerous myopia, the American media are unwilling to make this as important an issue as whether Trump really had more electoral votes than George W. Bush or how the Russians “stole” the election for Trump.

If we look beyond our blinders, we see profound concern: The Gulf Sunni states are so worried about Iran’s rise that they are allying themselves with their enemy, Israel.

As much as they detest the Jewish state, Israel does not project power beyond its adjacent territories, nor has it any desire to do so. The same cannot be said of Iran.

The rise of a newly aggressive Iran, one with unprecedented firepower, risks further destabilizing the Middle East. Will America be the last country to pay this significant attention?